People like to go to nice places. Beautiful & comfortable places. Safe places. Calm spaces, Inviting places which …nourish their souls and rejuvenate and make them feel good. People like places that help them enjoy Life.

https://twitter.com/ChristinaSVO/status/1866233165662007561?t=aF9B51AqxwirTUx3QuDHiQ&s=19

What kind of environments & ambiences are we building in Malawi. What kind of experiences are we putting up? Ok, we can’t all have an Eiffel Tower in our cities, nor a city as rich and enchanted as Paris. Or Barbados.

But what we currently have, or are working towards… is it beautiful, comfortable, inviting, welcoming and safe? Are we consciously striving to build spaces that are refreshing, and which rejuvenate and enrich the soul?

Do our tourism spaces make tourists want to visit Malawi and experience what we have to offer? More than once? Do they make people talk to their friends, families and colleagues about how much they enjoyed visiting Malawi?

If not, why?

Notice that we’re asking whether our spaces make tourists feel good, and want to come back for more of what they experienced.

Because while so many things currently need fixing in Malawi, when it comes to improving tourism, there are quite a lot of things that current service providers can do. And when it comes to the list of considerations, it is not only about how Malawians feel about Malawi, but how others i.e. the Tourists who visit the country feel. Is anyone seriously measuring and studying the feedback from visitors who visit Malawi? Shouldn’t someone within the government be doing that? And working with service providers to improve service?

A final point here. Just because you’re used to how Malawi currently looks, or how things currently work(or have worked since 1994), doesn’t necessarily mean that the tourists the country needs will also like it or be ok with it.

https://twitter.com/AfricaFactsZone/status/1690757296870109185?t=iBngr2SsAYgMv7VYZZRynA&s=19

We have to be objective about the quality of our tourism offerings, because that’s the first step towards truly assessing the actual quality(not imagined biased nationalistic feelings) of what we as a country have to offer, whether it is good enough, and how moving forward we can improve.